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Kyoto is a great city for bike riding. It is a big flat valley scooped out between small rugged mountains. There is only one hill in Kyoto and I live on top of it. Two thirds up it to be more precise. It is called Yoshida Yama (mountain) and it is like an afterthought following all those other mountains to the east. I walk up 131 steps to my house everyday. Quite a workout. I'm not complaining at all. I am very lucky. I have a million dollar view as my roommate says. Directly outside my window I can see Daimonji mountain. It is one of the most famous mountains in all of Japan. It is there in August of each year that they light many bonfires near the top in the shape of the Japanese character DAI. It means great and it is believed that this flame guides the spirits of the dead home after a three-day visit to their living relatives. Also very close to my house is the famous Path of Philosophy. This is a canal that runs along the base of Daimonji and it is lined with cherry trees. It is one of the most famous places to see the cherry blossoms in all of Japan. It is a five-minute walk from my house.
Sometimes I walk all the way down to the street and then realize that I forgot something. Then I trudge back up out of breath. I guess doing that a few times gave me the idea for my exercise routine. Who needs to go to the gym when you live on the side of a mountain? But running up and down steps does nothing for the muscles in the upper body, so I came out with a special workout program. I run up and do pushups at the top, then I run down. At the bottom of the hill is a gnarly old fig tree that is perfect for doing chin-ups. I do 8, then I run up again. I repeat the routine 4 times. It takes about 25 minutes and I feel good after doing it. I just have to watch out for the gnarly old lady who lives next to the fig tree. If I didn't know better would say that she is married to that tree. There is a resemblance. Every morning she goes to the small Shinto shrine in front of the fig tree and lights incense and puts water and a flower in front of the small stone statues there. The first time she saw me doing chin-ups on the tree, she lit into me. I didn't catch every word but the tone was clear, "get off of the tree. It's an old tree; it's older than me. You're going to break it. Have some respect for the tree." I felt sure that I wouldn't break the tree although once I did hear a funny squeaking sound come from the branch. I still do chin-ups there, however now I just put my hands as close to the center as possible to decrease the strain on the tree. Also I watch out for that old lady.
Japanese people really love their old trees. They treat them with some of the same respect that they treat their old people. Some of the old cherry trees on the rivers and canals were propped up with poles and wrapped. They looked like pampered old men in nursing homes. However these same trees come through year after year with some of the most beautiful blossoms.
April was a month of abrupt change in Kyoto. The weather was cold towards the end of March. I was sleeping with a hot water bottle in my sleeping bag and then whammo it was hot. Suddenly the cherry trees (sakura) were in full bloom. For a 10-day period the entire city seemed to go mad with sakura fever. First the red buds came out. Then the buds opened up to reveal pure white petals that snaked pink into the middle. From a distance, the white and red of the buds make a pink color. The blossoms burst out of the trees like fireworks. The streets were crowded with tourists from all over Japan who came to Kyoto to see the many famous temples awash with color from the many blooming trees. Many of the temples had special nighttime hours and put up lights so that the trees could be observed from a different perspective. Don't think temple, think light show, think Disneyland. Some temples and parks also put up wooden platforms so people could sit under the trees and eat and drink beer and sake. A walk through one of these places on the weekend when the blossoms were in bloom was like walking into a fraternity party. Everyone was drunk. Sloppy drunk. In Japan it's not considered embarrassing to be drunk in public at all. Many people were passed out and falling down. Even people in suits. But I saw no angry drunks, only happy ones. Maybe I was lucky.
The cherry blossoms hold a special place in the hearts of Japanese people. It is an important part of their cultural identity. There is even a law prohibiting picking or cutting off a cherry blossom branch. They get very emotional about them. Maybe it's something like what the English feel for the Queen. Most Japanese people I talked to can name at least 3 varieties of cherry trees. Some could name 5. They write songs about the blossoms. They sing their songs in public. They have been doing this for hundreds of years.
There is the story of the very famous poet, Saigo, (771-850) who when he got older told his friends that he wanted nothing more than to die under a sakura tree in bloom. His friends were sad when he died but they were happy at least that he got his wish. I've seen Japanese people looking up at the blossoms in an emotional state that has them on the verge of tears. And not just women. Japanese men are not embarrassed at all about appreciating flowers.
I got completely caught up in sakura fever. I wanted to go to every place famous for viewing, see every garden, and witness every nighttime blossom party. I went to Kiyomizu Temple, perhaps Kyoto's most popular temple twice, once in the day and once at night. What a great idea to light up the trees at night. It is strange to see the light from the inside with a black background instead of a white background. I went to the Heian Shrine where they hold a nighttime concert every year around the lake that is on the Shrine grounds. We strolled around the lake taking in the beautiful lit-up blossoms to the accompaniment of slightly dated jazz. I went to Arashiyama a western suburb of Kyoto at 7am on Sunday morning to beat the crowds. I went to the famous Kodaiji temple where in addition to the beautiful trees, they created a sculpture of a dragon in the stone garden made entirely out of roof tiles. It was spectacular. The dragon was partially submerged in the raked stones and seemed to be rising. The shifting light show added an eerie realism. I took hundreds of pictures of the trees. I out Japanesed the Japanese.
In honor of sakura week I decided to change my exercise routine. Instead of running up and down the steps, I decided to run down to the Path of Philosophy. Doing the pushups along the way was no problem of course but the chin-ups might have presented a problem. However the first day I ran down there I was happy to see that there were a few old trees with branches that hung straight out over the canal at a height that I could reach. I was surprised to see how many people were down there. The blossoms were peaking and even though it was 5:30 in the morning, photographers were down there staking out their territory. I saw rich men with their servants running around getting their gear ready for them. There were taxi drivers waiting for the tourists to arrive, cameras in hand. Everyone was setting up tripods and aiming, getting ready for those few seconds when the light would be right for that perfect amazing shot. The competition for space was fierce. It reminded me a little of the way surfers get territorial about their space when waiting for waves. Woe unto him that gets in the way. Luckily I wasn't involved in that competition. I just ran by them all. They waited for the good light to come as the sun inched up the mountain.
No one even noticed me as I dropped down and did my 20 pushups. Then I ran for a while until I came to an old cherry tree with its branch sticking out. It was behind a large group of photographers who were zeroing in on a large plush pink weeping cherry tree. As I caught the branch in my hand and pulled up, I felt the cool night wind mix with the warm light of the first rays of morning. I heard the click click and whir whir of shutters explode. Maybe all this racquet kept me from hearing what was closer to me. The old branch creaked as I pulled 2..3.....4............5........and then it happened. There was a loud SNAP and then a crash as the branch fell down into the canal. All of the photographers whirred around, cameras still in hand. They looked at me and the large destroyed sakura branch laying broken in the canal water, blossoms floating off it like pink blood. They starting yelling and they kept taking pictures but not of the trees but of me. There were perhaps 20 pictures taken in a span of 5 seconds as I sat stunned on the bank, brushing off my leg. As I got up, there was more yelling and then 3 or 4 of the men starting running toward me. I got up in time, before they reached me and started jogging away. I felt something hit my back. I turned to see what it was. It was a camera. One of the cab drivers had thrown his disposable camera at me. These guys were serious. Maybe they thought I was a terrorist. I turned on my burners. I had the advantage of having on running shoes and being warmed up. I ran for about 100 yards before I turned again. There about 30 yards behind me were 2 men running after me, arms waving wildly. I turned the corner and then another quickly and then ran as hard as I could. When I stopped again to look behind, no one was there. I ran all the way home. That was quite a workout!
So now I have to worry about the police. I wonder what the penalty is for willful destruction of a sakura tree. On the negative side, they have my picture, perhaps 20 of them. On the positive side, sakura season lasts only another week and then perhaps things will die down. I doubt if they could actually pick me out of a crowd. All white people look the same to the Japanese anyway. Just to play it safe though, I'll stay away from the Path of Philosophy for a while. I think I'll go back to running up and down my steps and dodging my old lady friend. It's much safer.


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After nearly a decade of careful observations an international team of astronomers has measured the distance to our neighbouring galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud, more accurately than ever before. This new measurement also improves our knowledge of the rate of expansion of the Universe -- the Hubble Constant -- and is a crucial step towards understanding the nature of the mysterious dark energy that is causing the expansion to accelerate. The team used telescopes at ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile as well as others around the globe. These results appear in the 7 March 2013 issue of the journal Nature.
Astronomers survey the scale of the Universe by first measuring the distances to close-by objects and then using them as standard candles [1] to pin down distances further and further out into the cosmos. But this chain is only as accurate as its weakest link. Up to now finding an accurate distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), one of the nearest galaxies to the Milky Way, has proved elusive. As stars in this galaxy are used to fix the distance scale for more remote galaxies, it is crucially important.
But careful observations of a rare class of double star have now allowed a team of astronomers to deduce a much more precise value for the LMC distance: 163 000 light-years.
"I am very excited because astronomers have been trying for a hundred years to accurately measure the distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud, and it has proved to be extremely difficult," says Wolfgang Gieren (Universidad de Concepción, Chile) and one of the leaders of the team. "Now we have solved this problem by demonstrably having a result accurate to 2%."
The improvement in the measurement of the distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud also gives better distances for many Cepheid variable stars [2]. These bright pulsating stars are used as standard candles to measure distances out to more remote galaxies and to determine the expansion rate of the Universe -- the Hubble Constant. This in turn is the basis for surveying the Universe out to the most distant galaxies that can be seen with current telescopes. So the more accurate distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud immediately reduces the inaccuracy in current measurements of cosmological distances.
The astronomers worked out the distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud by observing rare close pairs of stars, known as eclipsing binaries [3]. As these stars orbit each other they pass in front of each other. When this happens, as seen from Earth, the total brightness drops, both when one star passes in front of the other and, by a different amount, when it passes behind [4].
By tracking these changes in brightness very carefully, and also measuring the stars' orbital speeds, it is possible to work out how big the stars are, their masses and other information about their orbits. When this is combined with careful measurements of the total brightness and colours of the stars [5] remarkably accurate distances can be found.
This method has been used before, but with hot stars. However, certain assumptions have to be made in this case and such distances are not as accurate as is desirable. But now, for the first time, eight extremely rare eclipsing binaries where both stars are cooler red giant stars have been identified [6]. These stars have been studied very carefully and yield much more accurate distance values -- accurate to about 2%.
"ESO provided the perfect suite of telescopes and instruments for the observations needed for this project: HARPS for extremely accurate radial velocities of relatively faint stars, and SOFI for precise measurements of how bright the stars appeared in the infrared," adds Grzegorz Pietrzyński (Universidad de Concepción, Chile and Warsaw University Observatory, Poland), lead author of the new paper in Nature.
"We are working to improve our method still further and hope to have a 1% LMC distance in a very few years from now. This has far-reaching consequences not only for cosmology, but for many fields of astrophysics," concludes Dariusz Graczyk, the second author on the new Nature paper.
[1] Standard candles are objects of known brightness. By observing how bright such an object appears astronomers can work out the distance -- more distant objects appear fainter. Examples of such standard candles are Cepheid variables [2] and Type Ia supernovae. The big difficulty is calibrating the distance scale by finding relatively close examples of such objects where the distance can be determined by other means.
[2] Cepheid variables are bright unstable stars that pulsate and vary in brightness. But there is a very clear relationship between how quickly they change and how bright they are. Cepheids that pulsate more quickly are fainter than those that pulsate more slowly. This period-luminosity relation allows them to be used as standard candles to measure the distances of nearby galaxies.
[3] This work is part of the long-term Araucaria Project to improve measurements of the distances to nearby galaxies.
[4] The exact light variations depend on the relative sizes of the stars, their temperatures and colours and the details of the orbit.
[5] The colours are measured by comparing the brightness of the stars at different near-infrared wavelengths.
[6] These stars were found by searching the 35 million LMC stars that were studied by the OGLE project
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Northeast Utilities Raises Common Dividend
Northeast Utilities Raises Common Dividend
HARTFORD, Conn. & BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- The Northeast Utilities (NYS: NU) Board of Trustees today approved a quarterly dividend of $0.3675 per share, payable on March 28, 2013, to shareholders of record as of the close of business on March 1, 2013.
The March 2013 dividend represents a 7.1 percent increase over NU's previous quarterly dividend level.
"This increase underscores our confidence in the company's financial outlook, while at the same time continuing a conservative payout level that allows us to continue to make very substantial investments in the region's electric and natural gas infrastructure, which we project will be approximately $1.6 billion in 2013," said Thomas J. May, NU president and chief executive officer.
May noted that the new annualized dividend rate of $1.47 per share is consistent with NU's plan to grow its dividend in line with its earnings growth and above the average annual dividend increase for the electric utility industry.
Northeast Utilities (NU) operates New England's largest energy delivery company. NU and its companies are committed to safety, reliability, environmental leadership and stewardship, as well as expanding energy options for its more than 3.5 million electric and natural gas customers in Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire. NU is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol NU and has approximately 314 million common shares outstanding. Learn more about NU and its family of companies at www.nu.com.
This news release includes statements concerning NU's expectations, beliefs, plans, objectives, goals, strategies, assumptions of future events, future financial performance or growth and other statements that are not historical facts.These statements are "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.In some cases, readers can identify these forward-looking statements through the use of words or phrases such as "estimate, "expect," "anticipate," "intend," "plan," "project," "believe," "forecast," "should," "could," and other similar expressions.Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results or outcomes to differ materially from those included in the forward-looking statements.Factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those included in the forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, actions or inaction of local, state and federal regulatory and taxing bodies; changes in business and economic conditions, including their impact on interest rates, bad debt expense and demand for NU's products and services; changes in weather patterns; changes in laws, regulations or regulatory policy; changes in levels or timing of capital expenditures; disruptions in the capital markets or other events that make NU's access to necessary capital more difficult or costly; developments in legal or public policy doctrines; technological developments; changes in accounting standards and financial reporting regulations; fluctuations in the value of our remaining competitive contracts; actions of rating agencies; the possibility that expected merger synergies will not be realized or will not be realized within the expected time period; and other presently unknown or unforeseen factors. Other risk factors are detailed from time to time in NU's and NSTAR's reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.Any forward-looking statement speaks only as of the date on which such statement is made, and NU undertakes no obligation to update the information contained in any forward-looking statements to reflect developments or circumstances occurring after the statement is made or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events.
Northeast Utilities
Jeffrey R. Kotkin, 860-728-4650
KEYWORDS: United States North America Connecticut Massachusetts
The article Northeast Utilities Raises Common Dividend originally appeared on Fool.com.
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Friday Cocktail Recipe: The Summer Sage
You got the kids back to school. You survived the 105 degree late-August heat. And now — it's time for a drink. This cocktail, with red plums, sage, and rye whiskey, is like a grown-up whiskey sour.
Rye whiskey, a cousin to Tennessee whiskey (aka Jack Daniels) and bourbon, is a sort of forgotten American classic. Whiskey made from a rye mash has been around for hundreds of years — George Washington used to distill it at Mount Vernon. Many early cocktails, like the old-fashioned and the sazerac, called for rye whiskey, but it fell out of favor after prohibition.
With the cocktail renaissance of the past decade, rye whiskey has come back in a big way. It's now quite easy to find it at your local liquor store. (A good, reasonably priced brand is Old Overholt.) So what's all the fuss about? Rye whiskey, when compared to a Tennessee whiskey like Jack Daniels, is less sweet, with more pronounced spice flavors. Paired with red plums and sage, it makes for a lovely little cocktail that looks like pink lemonade but packs a real punch.
The key, I've learned, to making any drink with fresh fruit is to make sure the fruit is especially ripe and juicy. How do you find the perfect plum? A ripe red plum will be dark (not bright red) all over, slightly soft to the touch, and very fragrant.
The Summer Sage
Makes 1 drink
Nutritional Info
- 6 slices
red plum, as ripe and juicy as possible
- 4 to 5
sage leaves, stems removed
- 1/4 to 1/2 ounce
simple syrup (more for a sweeter drink, less for a more pronounced whiskey taste.)
- Splash
(about 1/8 ounce) fresh-squeezed lemon juice
- 2 ounces
rye whiskey
Add the plums, sage, and simple syrup to the bottom of a shaker, and muddle (or smoosh vigorously with the back of a spoon) until the plums form a nice mush. Fill the shaker with ice and add the lemon juice and whiskey. Shake and then double strain into a cocktail glass.
Related: Vanilla, Pear and Sage: Summer Cocktail with Navan
Nancy Mitchell loves whiskey, growing her own herbs, and whiskey…with herbs. You can find more of her recipes on her blog, The Backyard Bartender.
(Images: Nancy Mitchell)


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Sun Shower introduces two new flavors
ORLANDO, Fla. Sun Shower has added two new flavors‹Nectarine Cranberry and Nectarine Grape Orange‹to its growing line of 100% Nectarine juices.
"Both children and adults love the expanded variety and the unique nutritional value we are offering," said Chris New, founder, chairmand and chief executive officer of NBI Juiceworks. "By drinking one 12-ounce bottle of Sun Shower a day, you will get the equivalent of three servings of fruit."
The seven varieties of Sun Shower 100% Nectarine juice, which also include nectarine, nectarine berry, nectarine mango, nectarine acai and nectarine pmegranate, are high in potassium, vitamin C, antioxidants and are rich in beta carotene. Currently available in 12-ounce and 28-ounce containers, Sun Shower 100% Nectarine juices are found in the produce section of major retailers.


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The NFL agreed Wednesday to remove a $675 million cap on damages from thousands of concussion-related claims after a federal judge questioned whether there would be enough money to cover as many as 20,000 retired players.
A revised settlement agreement filed in federal court in Philadelphia also eliminated a provision that barred anyone who gets concussion damages from the NFL from suing the NCAA or other amateur football leagues.
In January, U.S. District Judge Anita Brody had denied preliminary approval of the deal because she worried the money could run out sooner than expected. The settlement is designed to last at least 65 years and cover retired players who develop Lou Gehrig's disease, dementia or other neurological problems believed to be caused by concussions suffered during their pro careers.
"Some of the players were concerned and asking questions about whether they could be in a deal if they weren't sure there'd be money there for them 40 years from now if they get sick, God forbid. … That's what drove these changes," said plaintiffs' lawyers Christopher Seeger.
More than 4,500 former players have filed suit, some accusing the league of fraud for its handling of concussions. They include former Dallas Cowboys running back Tony Dorsett and Super Bowl-winning Chicago Bears quarterback Jim McMahon, who suffers from dementia.
The original settlement included $675 million for compensatory claims for players with neurological symptoms, $75 million for baseline testing and $10 million for medical research and education. The NFL would also pay an additional $112 million to the players' lawyers, for a total payout of more than $870 million.
The revised settlement eliminates the cap on overall damage claims but retains a payout formula for individual retirees that considers their age and illness. A young retiree with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease, would receive $5 million, a 50-year-old with Alzheimer's disease would get $1.6 million, and an 80-year-old with early dementia would get $25,000.
Even with the cap removed, both sides said they believe the NFL will spend no more than about $675 million on damage claims by ex-players.
Brody will decide later whether to accept the new settlement terms. She still has to rule on a petition by a group of seven players who say the settlement pays them nothing for symptoms ranging from headaches to personality changes.
Critics of the deal have also said the league, with annual revenues approaching $10 billion, was getting off lightly. Lawyers for the plaintiffs said the settlement avoids the risk of a protracted legal battle.
Seeger said any ex-player who opts out of the settlement and pursues litigation on his own would have to overcome a stiff NFL defense. The NFL has a range of legal arguments at its disposal, and a player would have to prove that his illness was caused by a concussion suffered during his pro career, he said.
"Continuing to litigate against the NFL is a long and uncertain road that can take them many years and ultimately leave retired players with nothing at all," he said. "No one should take lightly any decision to abandon the benefits provided by this agreement."
The proposal does not cover current NFL players, nor does it include an admission from the league that it hid information from players about head injuries.
"Today's agreement reaffirms the NFL's commitment to provide help to those retired players and their families who are in need, and to do so without the delay, expense and emotional cost associated with protracted litigation," NFL Senior Vice President Anastasia Danias said in a statement.
One of the plaintiffs is Kevin Turner, who played for the Philadelphia Eagles and New England Patriots and is now battling ALS.
"The compensation provided in this settlement will lift a heavy burden off of the men who are suffering," he said in a statement. "I am also personally comforted by the knowledge that this settlement is guaranteed to be there for any retired player who needs it."
It's not clear when the judge might rule, but Seeger said he is hopeful that preliminary approval will come in the next few weeks.
AP Pro Football Writer Barry Wilner contributed to this report.
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ABS-CBN's official summer teleserye "Mirabella" has left TV viewers mesmerized as the pilot episode of Julia Barretto and Enrique Gil's fantasy series won in the TV ratings game and dominated Twitter's list of worldwide trending topics last Monday (March 24).
Based on data from Kantar Media, "Mirabella" scored a national TV rating of 22% or more than double of its rival program on GMA, "Paraiso Ko'y Ikaw" that only got 10%. Julia and Enrique's series also conquered popular social networking sites such as Twitter where the hashtag #TheStoryOfMirabella became the number one worldwide trending topic.
Meanwhile, TV viewers will surely be more captivated by the story of "Mirabella" with the birth of Daisy (Dimples Romana) and Alfred's (James Blanco) daughter Mira. What will Osang (Pokwang) and Paeng (John Lapus) do when they find out that Mira inherited the curse that Olive (Mylene Dizon) gave Daisy? Will they be able to raise Mira as a loving and kind person despite her having a broken family?
Don't miss the drama series that will change the true meaning of beauty, "Mirabella," weeknights, after "TV Patrol" on ABS-CBN Primetime Bida. For more information about "Mirabella," visit the show's official social media accounts at facebook.com/MirabellaOnline and twitter.com/MirabellaOnline.


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THE SHEPHERD How sweet is the Shepherd's sweet lot! From the morn to the evening he stays; He shall follow his sheep all the day, And his tongue shall be filled with praise. For he hears the lambs' innocent call, And he hears the ewes' tender reply; He is watching while they are in peace, For they know when their Shepherd is nigh. THE ECHOING GREEN The sun does arise, And make happy the skies; The merry bells ring To welcome the Spring; The skylark and thrush, The birds of the bush, Sing louder around To the bells' cheerful sound; While our sports shall be seen On the echoing Green. Old John, with white hair, Does laugh away care, Sitting under the oak, Among the old folk. They laugh at our play, And soon they all say, "Such, such were the joys When we all--girls and boys-- In our youth-time were seen On the echoing Green." Till the little ones, weary, No more can be merry: The sun does descend, And our sports have an end. Round the laps of their mothers Many sisters and brothers, Like birds in their nest, Are ready for rest, And sport no more seen On the darkening green. THE LAMB Little Lamb, who made thee Dost thou know who made thee, Gave thee life, and bid thee feed By the stream and o'er the mead; Gave thee clothing of delight, Softest clothing, woolly, bright; Gave thee such a tender voice, Making all the vales rejoice? Little Lamb, who made thee? Dost thou know who made thee? Little Lamb, I'll tell thee; Little Lamb, I'll tell thee: He is called by thy name, For He calls Himself a Lamb He is meek, and He is mild, He became a little child. I a child, and thou a lamb, We are called by His name. Little Lamb, God bless thee! Little Lamb, God bless thee! THE LITTLE BLACK BOY My mother bore me in the southern wild, And I am black, but oh my soul is white! White as an angel is the English child, But I am black, as if bereaved of light. My mother taught me underneath a tree, And, sitting down before the heat of day, She took me on her lap and kissed me, And, pointed to the east, began to say: "Look on the rising sun: there God does live, And gives His light, and gives His heat away, And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive Comfort in morning, joy in the noonday. "And we are put on earth a little space, That we may learn to bear the beams of love And these black bodies and this sunburnt face Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove. "For when our souls have learn'd the heat to bear, The cloud will vanish, we shall hear His voice, Saying, 'Come out from the grove, my love and care And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice'," Thus did my mother say, and kissed me; And thus I say to little English boy. When I from black and he from white cloud free, And round the tent of God like lambs we joy I'll shade him from the heat till he can bear To lean in joy upon our Father's knee; And then I'll stand and stroke his silver hair, And be like him, and he will then love me. THE BLOSSOM Merry, merry sparrow! Under leaves so green A happy blossom Sees you, swift as arrow, Seek your cradle narrow, Near my bosom. Pretty, pretty robin! Under leaves so green A happy blossom Hears you sobbing, sobbing, Pretty, pretty robin, Near my bosom. THE CHIMNEY-SWEEPER When my mother died I was very young, And my father sold me while yet my tongue Could scarcely cry "Weep! weep! weep! weep!" So your chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep. There's little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head, That curled like a lamb's back, was shaved; so I said, "Hush, Tom! never mind it, for, when your head's bare, You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair." And so he was quiet, and that very night, As Tom was a-sleeping, he had such a sight!-- That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, and Jack, Were all of them locked up in coffins of black. And by came an angel, who had a bright key, And he opened the coffins, and let them all free; Then down a green plain, leaping, laughing, they run, And wash in a river, and shine in the sun. Then naked and white, all their bags left behind, They rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind; And the Angel told Tom, if he'd be a good boy, He'd have God for his father, and never want joy. And so Tom awoke, and we rose in the dark, And got with our bags and our brushes to work. Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy and warm: So, if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.
The Pines 44 - Poems, Photos, Personal Stories
Thursday, March 27, 2014
Poems of William Blake
Saturday, February 1, 2014
Tybee Island
Tybee Island
By Anonymous, Stone Mountain, GA
The waves crash onto the shore
A shore that goes on forever
The tides uncover the jewels of the sea
A sea that is full of wonder
The callus shells and petrified sharks teeth found under the
gritty sand beneath my shoes
All the hidden treasures appear into sight
The gray, overcast sky hovers over me like a blanket that
stretches for miles
The sun peers through the clouds, illuminating a reflection
onto the waves
All I see are the colors of nature surrounding me
Seagull chirps fill the air with rhythmic tones
Rhythms that bring me to peace
Wind tussles my hair, leaving it in an unruly mess
The cold wind bites through my jacket, while I feel the Atlantic
breezes roll in
Serenity of the beach washes away troubles in life
Peaceful feelings rush over me, as I inhale happiness and
exhale stress
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Recommended reading:
John Brown: Abolitionist
Production for the Meet the Past television series concludes in September with a final program taped before a live audience at the Central Library, 14 W. 10th St. The series will air in prime-time on KCPT (channel 19) during the 2009-10 season.
Meet the Past features Library Director Crosby Kemper III interviewing prominent historical figures (as portrayed by actors and veteran Chautauqua performers) with Kansas City-area connections.
Major funding for Meet the Past has been provided by a grant from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.
Admission to the Meet the Past program is free. A 6 p.m. reception precedes the event. Click here or call 816.701.3407 to RSVP. Free parking is available in the Library District Parking Garage at 10th and Baltimore.
On Tuesday, September 1, at 6:30 p.m., Kerry Altenbernd portrays John Brown, the famous (and infamous) abolitionist.
John Brown rose to fame during the Bleeding Kansas years in the mid- to late-1850s. He is perhaps best remembered for his unsuccessful raid on the federal arsenal in Harpers Ferry (then in Virginia, now present-day West Virginia) in October 1859.
Brown was considered by many to be a hero and by just as many to be a terrorist. Abraham Lincoln called him a "misguided fanatic." Jefferson Davis said he was a "blood-thirsty murderer." Intellectuals such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau likened him to a 19th century "Christ."
Altenbernd is director of the Douglas County Law Library and a board member of the Black Jack Battlefield Trust near Lawrence. He has portrayed John Brown on numerous occasions for many years.


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Another great Pink Saturday with Beverly has arrived. For some of the neatest pinks anywhere, join her at How Sweet the Sound.
Those of you that viewed my last Pink Saturday, will recall I attended this little girls one year birthday party. Here she is in all her pink glory.
These are candles her mother fixed with her named spelled out on them.
Her beautiful and very good pink Happy Birthday cake.
The table decorations and balloons floating everywhere.
Her mother even had this lovely flower arrangement fixed just for her precious little one. She hardly knew what it was all about, but still she and all the adults had fun.
Friday, October 2, 2009
Pink Saturday
24 comments:
- Stayathomemommy said...
Oh what a wonderful birthday party! She looks just adorable in pink! Happy Pink Saturday.
~Karrie - October 2, 2009 at 11:17 PM
- CC said...
Such a wonderful birthday for such a beautiful little one. She's just gorgeous in her tiny pink outfit. Happy Pinks to you and to Lilly..hope your weekend is a wonderful one.
- October 2, 2009 at 11:37 PM
- Buttercup said...
What a doll. She is too cute. Found my way over here from Corgidog's.
- October 2, 2009 at 11:44 PM
- Regina said...
Hi LV . Happy Pink Saturday!
Happy birthday to Lilly. She is so cute in her pink outfit.
Sweet pink post.
Regina - October 3, 2009 at 12:31 AM
- Olde Dame Penniwig said...
Oh, that pink cake really looks tasty AND beautiful! Glad it "ate as well as it looked." Some don't, as we have found out -- cake appearances can be deceiving!
- October 3, 2009 at 1:14 AM
- Betsy Banks Adams said...
What a great "Pink" Saturday choice, LV. That little gal is precious --and I loved all of the pink accessories!!!!
I don't feel very pink today though. My sweet brother died yesterday.
Betsy - October 3, 2009 at 10:53 AM
- Hello Matilda! said...
Thanks for visiting, hope you have a beautiful pink saturday and a wonderful weekend.
Hugs from Argentina :D - October 3, 2009 at 11:01 AM
- ♥Mimi♥ said...
Winter is just around the corner in my neck of the woods and I won't see much pink in my garden again until at least April so THANK YOU for the wonderful blog entry and for giving me a little pinkie-lift today!
A little girl in pink - the best pink of all☺
Hoping that your weekend is filled with laughter and sunshine☺ - October 3, 2009 at 11:09 AM
- Char said...
Oh Meme, she is so cute, sweet and all girlie in pink. Her cake looks so good, I want a bite right now. The decor is pretty and looks like a good time was had by all, Happy Pink Saturday, Char
- October 3, 2009 at 12:39 PM
- Mary Bergfeld said...
How very sweet. It must have been a wonderful party. I hope you are having a wonderful day.
- October 3, 2009 at 12:55 PM
- Unknown said...
wow I am in love with all that pink...so pretty!
Stopping by with a SSS update:
we sent out the first round of q&a's last night if you did not receive an email from us please click the link below and follow the instructions-if you did get the email and have filled out the q&a you are good to go-your answers were automatically entered in our google doc form...
Thanks and we are so excited you are joining the SSS
http://georgienba.blogspot.com/2009/10/secret-santa-soiree-official-411.html - October 3, 2009 at 2:01 PM
- Nancy said...
Lilly is precious. The room is so nicely decorated. I do love the cake, too. Happy Pink Saturday!
- October 3, 2009 at 3:02 PM
- SmilingSally said...
That cake and those flowers are the tops!
- October 3, 2009 at 6:04 PM
- Shirl said...
Hello, Happy Pink Saturday! Thank you so much for stopping by and leaving a sweet comment. Love your pink this week, what a pretty cake and candles, the table setting is just stunning! Happy Birthday to Lilly!
Bless you, Shirl
Shirls Rose Cottage - October 3, 2009 at 8:00 PM
- George said...
What a wonderful Pink Saturday post. Lily is an adorable little girl.
- October 3, 2009 at 8:14 PM
- GwendolynKay said...
What a charming little girl and it looks like she had a charming party!
Happy Pink Saturday!
Gwen - October 3, 2009 at 8:50 PM
- Iphigenia said...
so sweet and pretty. happy pink saturday
- October 4, 2009 at 12:50 AM
- The Old Parsonage said...
What a perfectly pink day for this sweet little lady!
Happy Belated PS
~Leann - October 4, 2009 at 8:21 AM
- Gabriela said...
Happy Pink Saturday!
Ahhhhhhhh! So very cute!
If I just knew I could have made this tiny princess a crown!
A cupcake tutu, so very cool!
~ Gabriela ~ - October 4, 2009 at 9:39 AM
- Anonymous said...
A beautiful pink birthday party. How lucky you are to have her nearby so you can celebrate with that precious baby. Happy Belated Pink Saturday
- October 4, 2009 at 11:35 AM
- Coralie Cederna Johnson said...
Thank you for visiting my blog on PINK SATURDAY! Your pink frosted cake and pink posting is just as sweet as sweet can be! Hope your week is wonderful!
- October 4, 2009 at 12:26 PM
- Happily Retired Gal said...
What a little QT in her adorable pink dress. Looks like a lovely birthday celebration ;--)
Hugs and blessings, - October 5, 2009 at 12:22 PM
- Susie Jefferson said...
How adorable! Such a sweet outfit, too. Happy Pink Saturday (sorry to be late, the computer is playing up yet again - keeps overheating so I have to keep turning it off. I'm getting nowhere fast!)
- October 5, 2009 at 5:20 PM
- Personalized Sketches and Sentiments said...
What a pretty in pink sweetie!
LV, you do amaze me, in that you are so good about keeping up with your blogging... I know that I have said this before!
I am sadly, always "catching up" or at least trying to!
Blessings & aloha! - October 7, 2009 at 4:05 PM


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Vice President
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Mrs. Cheney
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For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
November 19, 2001
President Pardons Thanksgiving Turkey
Remarks by the President At Annual Pardoning of the Thanksgiving Turkey
The Rose Garden
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you all. Please be seated. Good afternoon, and welcome to the White House. I'm not going to speak too long, because our guest of honor looks a little nervous. Nobody's told him yet that I'm going to give him a pardon.
We're especially glad that so many of the young can come today. Thank you all for being here. In a few moments, you can come up and pet the turkey if you want to.
Nick Weaver and Stuart Procter of the National Turkey Foundation are here, and I want to thank you both for being here. Honored you're here. Actually, you probably don't know this, but there were two turkeys brought to Washington for this occasion. By custom, an alternate is always on hand to fill in if needed.
This one right here -- his name is Liberty. And the other turkey, the alternate, his name is Freedom. Now, Freedom is not here because he's in a secure and undisclosed location. (Laughter.)
This White House tradition dates back to Abraham Lincoln. Probably what you don't know is that Abraham Lincoln had a son named Tad who kept a turkey as a pet. I thought about trying to keep the turkey as a pet, but I don't think the two dogs and the cat would like it.
From our very beginnings, gratitude has been a part of our national character. Through the generations, our country has known its share of hardships. And we've been through some tough times, some testing moments during the last months. Yet, we've never lost sight of the blessings around us: the freedoms we enjoy, the people we love, and the many gifts of our prosperous land.
On this holiday, we give thanks for our many blessings and for life itself. Thanksgiving reminds us that the greatest gifts don't come from the hands of man, but from the Maker of Heaven and Earth.
These week American families will gather in that spirit. We will remember, too, those who approach the holidays with a burden of sadness. We think especially of families that recently lost loved ones, and of our men and women in the Armed Forces serving far away from home.
This is a nation of many faiths. And this holiday season, we'll all be joined in prayer that those who mourn will find comfort; that those in dangers will find protection; and that God will continue to watch over the land we love.
I now have the duty of ending the suspense of our feathery guest. For this turkey and his traveling companion, this will not be their last Thanksgiving. They will live out their days in comfort and care of Kidwell Farm of Herndon, Virginia. By virtue of an unconditional presidential pardon, they are safe from harm.
May God continue to bless America, and I hope everybody has a happy Thanksgiving. Thank you for coming. We'll go over and see the turkey. (Applause.)
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TW Mosa Red 1 Pint Whipped Cream Dispenser - 24 Ultrapure Chargers
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Men's Basketball Recruit Form
The Men's Basketball program at Wilmington University would like to give prospective recruits the opportunity to share information with us in order to kick-start the process of recruitment.
STEP 1: Fill out the Recruitment Form below.
This form will provide us with contact information for you and your previous coaches, basic knowledge about your basketball career up to this point, your NCAA status, and more.
STEP 2: Submit a Video
YouTube: You can send us a link to a video of yourself playing in a live, competitive game situation.
Send a DVD: You can also send us a DVD via traditional mail as well. Make sure the DVD is addressed appropriately.
1365 Pulaski Highway
Newark, DE 19720
Dan Burke, Head Men's Basketball Coach
If you have any questions you can contact the Men's Basketball program by e-mail. firstname.lastname@example.com


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River group considers car removal from Tuck
A fledgling effort now under way could lead to the cleanup of junked cars lining the banks of the Tuckasegee River.
The cars were used routinely in years past in Swain and Jackson counties to stabilize the Tuckasegee's banks and prevent erosion. Local residents remember them being dumped there about five decades ago, and some said time has softened the ugliness into familiarity.
"I think we're so used to it we don't pay too much attention to them," said Lois Walker, who runs Walker's Flea Market along the Tuckasegee near Bryson City. "Back then, you didn't have a choice. You had to build the banks up. We had floods in the springtime that came right up to the road."
But these days, more and more boaters and fishermen are using the river, and the cars could prove more than an aesthetic problem. They might actually pose a danger, said Roger Clapp, director of the Watershed Association of the Tuckasegee River, a group dedicated to improving the Tuckasegee's water quality and habitat.
Clapp said mounting a cleanup hinges on whether there is a definable health and safety hazard, and if the community wants to fix the situation.
Related Items
"I'm just starting to make the contacts now," he said.
Some residents expressed indifference toward a cleanup.
"It doesn't matter to me," said Billy McFall, who between ringing up customers at Cooper Creek General Store on U.S. 19 recalled how floodwaters had once dislodged a car and washed it farther down the Tuckasegee.
For business owners with stores flanking the river, however, the old-timey stabilization method is a critical issue. Loretta Monsen of Destiny's Thrift and Craft Supply Store estimated she's lost three feet of property to the Tuckasegee.
"I agree they are an eyesore, but unless there's another solution, they can't come out," she said. "I'd love to see it look pretty, but it's not going to be pretty either if my house is sitting in the river."
Clapp said determining possible solutions — such as entombing the cars, burying them under riprap or removing them — would require extensive engineering. He said one of the next steps is mapping the extent of the problem.


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Of particular interest is the fact that Indian populations have little influence by the pink (main Mongoloid) cluster. As I have stated before on numerous occasions, whatever similarity between Indians and East Asians is due to ancient common ancestry (evidenced e.g., in their common possession of mtDNA macrohaplogroup M), rather than any significant "East Asian" ancestry. From the paper:
We found that allele frequencies in India showed detectably greater similarity to populations in Europe and the Middle East than to those in East Asia (Figure 4). This result is consistent with the fact that the cluster corresponding to India in Figure 2A subdivides a previously obtained cluster corresponding to Europe, the Middle East, and Central/South Asia [19].The genetic homogeneity of Indians may be resolved with more markers:
This observation, together with the reasonably strong support in the neighbor-joining tree for particular groupings within India, suggests that a detectable amount of population structure does exist in the Indian data and that the addition of more loci might cause clusters corresponding to specific subsets of the Indian sample to become distinguishable. It is noteworthy, however, that in previous analyses of other geographic regions [19,28] using smaller numbers of markers, subclusters have been more easily identifiable elsewhere than was seen here for India with 1,200 markers.PLoS Genetics
Low Levels of Genetic Divergence across Geographically and Linguistically Diverse Populations from India
Noah A. Rosenberg et al.
Ongoing modernization in India has elevated the prevalence of many complex genetic diseases associated with a western lifestyle and diet to near-epidemic proportions. However, although India comprises more than one sixth of the world's human population, it has largely been omitted from genomic surveys that provide the backdrop for association studies of genetic disease. Here, by genotyping India-born individuals sampled in the United States, we carry out an extensive study of Indian genetic variation. We analyze 1,200 genome-wide polymorphisms in 432 individuals from 15 Indian populations. We find that populations from India, and populations from South Asia more generally, constitute one of the major human subgroups with increased similarity of genetic ancestry. However, only a relatively small amount of genetic differentiation exists among the Indian populations. Although caution is warranted due to the fact that United States–sampled Indian populations do not represent a random sample from India, these results suggest that the frequencies of many genetic variants are distinctive in India compared to other parts of the world and that the effects of population heterogeneity on the production of false positives in association studies may be smaller in Indians (and particularly in Indian-Americans) than might be expected for such a geographically and linguistically diverse subset of the human population.


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Senior Advisor
Related Expertise: 戦略立案, 組織設計, コーポレートファイナンス&ストラテジー
By George Stalk and Sam Stewart
Everywhere we look, we see large, successful companies facing intense pressure from newer, smaller, faster-moving companies that threaten to disrupt their industries. Across the business landscape, speed is becoming more important than size, and the basis of competition is shifting from scale to pace or tempo.
In a companion article ("Tempo and the Art of Disruption," February 2019), we argue that disruptors sustain a tempo advantage by cycling more rapidly than their competitors through a four-step learning loop consisting of scan, orient, decide, and act. The greater the market leader's cycle time advantage over its rivals, the greater its competitive advantage will be.
Recognizing these changes, some CEOs are adopting agile ways of working—pioneered by the tech industry—to set priorities, allocate resources, and empower teams to make decisions more quickly. The goal is to achieve what we call fast execution. At its core, fast execution is about minimizing hierarchy and unleashing the creativity and judgment of the people closest to the work and to customers. The goal is to use increased autonomy to create an organization in which average people deliver above-average performance every day—and learning happens continuously and transparently.
Too often, unfortunately, companies grant teams autonomy before ensuring that they have a clear, shared understanding of the organization's strategic direction. And autonomy without alignment can rapidly lead to chaos.
How can leadership teams develop and communicate strategy in a way that reliably guides an agile organization toward enhanced and sustained competitive advantage? The traditional annual strategic planning process is a poor fit for this approach—particularly for companies competing in rapidly changing markets, where a tempo advantage is most decisive.
For fast execution to work, fast strategy is necessary.
To ensure that its agile teams all work toward the same objectives, the executive team must do four things: communicate a consistent mission, establish a shared strategic context, lead with strategic intent, and design for speed.
Communicate a consistent mission. The more complex and fast moving the external environment, the more important it is to align agile teams on a stable overarching purpose or mission. The best mission statements are simple and aspirational.
A good example is Amazon's ("To be the Earth's most customer-centric company"). This mission becomes the company's "true north"—a fixed point in a changing world that guides the company forward. Mission is not strategy. Mission specifies the destination; strategy articulates the plan to get there. And even in highly turbulent markets, the destination typically changes far less frequently than the plan.
Establish a shared strategic context. To be successful, teams need to understand the strategic landscape in which their company operates. How are customers changing? Which segments are most attractive, and what are their priorities? How are traditional competitors positioned? What are the dominant business models? Who are the new entrants, and how are they trying to win? What drives competitive advantage? What potential vectors of disruption are likely?
Ensuring that the organization shares a set of strategic assumptions about what drives and what might derail competitive success simplifies operations, improves and eases alignment, clarifies where resources should be allocated, and prepares the organization to recognize market shifts that might signal a need to reconsider strategic assumptions.
Renowned US military theorist Colonel John Boyd stressed the importance of establishing a "common shared understanding" (CSU) to build trust, foster alignment, and free subordinates to take informed initiative. With a CSU in place, the military organization from top to bottom operates with a consistent map of the landscape of opportunities and risks. The same concepts apply to business.
Armed with the right strategic context, teams will make better decisions, faster. As one high-tech company advises its managers, "When one of your talented people does something dumb, don't blame them. Instead, ask yourself what context you failed to set."
Achieving a CSU is challenging. It is essential to fast strategy, but it isn't the strategy itself. Rather, it provides a foundation of facts on the ground to enable autonomous teams to work in parallel, with shared assumptions.
Lead with strategic intent. In traditional command-and-control organizations, detailed strategies are formulated through top-down decision making and typically take the form of detailed plans handed down once a year. The model assumes that teams are doers, not thinkers. But this traditional top-down approach is fundamentally incompatible with the fast strategy needed to complement the fast execution of agile.
In an agile organization, everyone is expected to exercise judgment, so leaders have an obligation to distill strategy and objectives to their essence—to give teams the freedom to innovate in their approach.
Simplicity and clarity are essential to balancing autonomy and alignment. People need to know the answers to basic questions such as where and how are we trying to win? To provide clear answers to these questions, a universal bank operating in more than 20 countries distilled its strategy down to winning in three clear customer segments on the basis of service. This had far-reaching effects on the way the company deployed resources (both funds and people), the way it was organized, and the financial performance it delivered; but the starting point was very simple and readily understandable to all.
Simplicity and clarity are not easy to get right. Dr. Gary Klein, an expert on decision making, determined that only 40% of US Marines understood their leaders' intent—even though the Marines are noted for fast execution. And in their seminal 2008 Harvard Business Review article, "Can You Say What Your Strategy Is?" David Collis and Michael Rukstad argued that for most corporations the answer to the question posed in their title is no.
Design for speed. Traditional organizations separate strategy and execution. Agile, responsive organizations remove this distinction and create an ongoing strategic loop by making deliberate, appropriate changes to communication structures and functional silos. To ensure that communication is two-way rather than just cascading down from the top, such organizations hold regular forums in which agile teams play back their understanding of what their objectives are and how they plan to achieve them.
Boyd's military theory offers us another helpful analogue here. In Boyd's view, alignment via the CSU enables "mission command." In simple terms, the leader shares the strategic intent with individual subordinates. Then, in a "back briefing," the subordinates either acknowledge the objective and tell the leader how they intend to achieve it or, if achieving it is not possible, negotiate an alternative objective. Once the leader and subordinates agree, the subordinates are expected to deliver the objective and—unless that objective needs to change—to do so without further involvement of the leader.
From a functional standpoint, fast execution has major implications for budgeting and performance management, traditionally the purviews of Finance and HR, respectively. Since neither of those departments links conceptually or organizationally to strategy, the traditional arrangement practically guarantees that the company won't realize its strategic intent. A more effective approach is to bring strategy, HR, and budgeting into a single operating system that encompasses goal setting, strategic planning, resource allocation, and performance management. Fast execution affects other support functions—such as legal, contracting, and procurement—as well.
To reap the strategic benefits of speed, organizations need to marry fast strategy to fast execution. Only when equipped with a shared understanding of the landscape and of leadership's strategic intent will agile teams be in a position to outmaneuver the competition—over and over again. Without clarity as to strategy, goals, guidelines, resources, and constraints, autonomy can quickly descend into chaos. In other words, the more alignment an organization has, the more autonomy it can grant.
In a tempo-driven organization, everyone's attention is focused on the strategic objective and how to achieve it more quickly.
BCGの戦略シンクタンクとして、アイデア創出に有効なテクノロジーを活用し、ビジネス、テクノロジー、科学分野からの新しい価値あるインサイトを探求・開発しています。ビジネスリーダーを巻き込んで、ビジネスの理論と実践の境界線を広げ、ビジネス内外から革新的アイデアを取り入れるための刺激的なディスカッションや実験を行っています。2022年7月に日本における拠点であるBHI Japanを設立しました。


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Get Help
Contact a specific campus or county expert to get help with your questions.
Welcome home. The Universities of Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Technical College System are pleased to be working together to make it as easy as possible for veterans like you to access benefits, make the transition from military service to college, and find the right fit from among Wisconsin's public colleges and universities.
Together, the state technical colleges and UW campuses offer you a broad range of education opportunities. Earning a degree will open doors for you to new job opportunities. We hope you will consider one of our many campuses as you examine all your options.
The individuals and resources listed on this website are available to assist you in understanding and accessing veterans benefits and programs. Thank you for your service to our country, and best wishes as you plan your future.
Jay Rothman
Universities of Wisconsin
Morna Foy
Wisconsin Technical College System


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You remember when you were little and you watched all of those old movies from Disney? Like Aladdin, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Bambi, Mulan, and ect.?
Well I want all of you to make cards from those old Disney movies. :) relive those wonderful moments.
You have 2 months to complete this challenge.
1. has to be in their original style. (no fan art)
2. Maybe a quote from the movie? or a quote to fit the image.
3. 5 entry limit
1st Place Winner: 3 cards of choice
2nd Place Winner: 2 cards of choice
3rd Place Winner: 1 card of choice


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The following obituaries were received for Monday –
Robert Dean Hopper – Orleans
Robert Dean Hopper, 82, of Orleans, passed away at 6:35 p.m. Saturday, November 10, 2012, at St. Vincent Dunn Hosptial in Bedford.
Born July 14, 1930, in Orange County, he was the son of Delbert and Marie (Kimble) Hopper. He married Mary Eileen Matter December 19, 1981. He was manager of a heating and air conditioning company and a graduate of Southport High School.
Survivors include his wife Mary Ellenn Hooper, of Orleans; daughters, Judy and husband Gary Klatka, of Orlando, Florida, Lisa and husband Albert Small, of Mitchell; stepson, Frank Carl (Junior) Hodge, of Wilmington, North Carolina; 9 grandchildren; sister, Dolores Pridemore, of Mitchell.
He was preceded in death by his parents.
Cremation was chosen; there will be no visitation.
Condolences may be sent to the family at www.chastainfuneralhome.com


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Show All Answers
The Placer County Sheriff's Office is continuously seeking qualified Reserve Deputy Sheriff candidates interested in assisting our Patrol Officers with the enforcement of local, state, and federal laws. This unpaid volunteer opportunity is open to anyone who possesses a current California P.O.S.T. reserve level II or level I certificate, or a P.O.S.T. basic academy certificate. Reserve deputies work a variety of details, such as:
You can view the Reserves webpage. For more information about the reserve program please email the Reserve office.
Explorer Post 901 is sponsored by the Placer County Sheriff's Office. This successful program is designed to educate and involve young men and women in police operations and to interest them in law enforcement functions, whether they enter the field of law enforcement or not. Law Enforcement Explorers are volunteers.
As an Explorer, young adults have the opportunity to assist the Placer County Sheriff's Office by broadening their understanding and firsthand knowledge of the challenges and job skills that make up their community's law enforcement service. In addition to gaining a working knowledge of police work, participants have the opportunity to give themselves to their community. For more information contact our Sheriff's Office or visit the Explorer Post 901 webpage.
The Placer County Law Enforcement Chaplaincy (PCLEC) is a field service ministry working with the members of law enforcement and their families and also works through Law Enforcement to act as victim advocates to the citizens of Placer County. The Chaplaincy continually provides the service of trained, critical incident Chaplains on a 24 hour / 7 day a week basis, with both proactive and reactive responses. The PCLEC serves a combination of 10 City, County, and State agencies at 14 locations. All of the services are provided at no cost to either the individuals, families, or the agencies the Chaplaincy serves. For more information, please visit the Sheriff's Office webpage for the Placer County Law Enforcement Chaplaincy webpage or visit the PCLEC website directly
The Sheriff's Office does take student interns on a very limited basis. Other County Departments also use paid student interns as needed and the County Human Resources Department establishes a Student Intern applicant list at least once a year. If interested in this position, please check our employment portal to inquire about current student intern recruitment.
All positions for the Placer County Sheriff's Office are posted at the Human Resources employment portal. All applications should be submitted to Placer County Human Resources Department through their automated job-application system (JOBS).
Benefits are determined by each Job Groups Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Union and Placer County. Each job classification falls within the following Benefit Groups. You will find a listing of these Benefit Groups, the benefit details, and the classifications represented on the Placer County Human Resources webpage, to view the Benefits by Summaries by Group. The MOU for each bargaining unit is also viewable on the Placer County Human Resources webpage, under this same link. Below is a list of the Benefit Groups and classifications within the Sheriff's Office.
Deputy Sheriff's Association - Safety
Elected Management - Safety
General - Safety
Management Safety
Placer County is located in beautiful Northern California, 80 miles northeast of San Francisco and 20 miles west of Reno. Placer County borders Sacramento, Nevada and El Dorado Counties as well as the State of Nevada. If traveling by air, the Sacramento International Airport is a 50 minute drive from Auburn, and Reno-Tahoe International Airport is a short drive from Lake Tahoe. There are smaller airports located in Auburn, Lincoln, Truckee-Tahoe and Blue Canyon. If traveling by car, Interstate 80 runs the length of the county, and is intersected by a network of well-developed rural roads, providing easy access to many areas.
Read more about our beautiful county on:
The County of Placer offers extra help employment for specific classifications. Our Sheriff's Office utilizes extra help staff to maintain minimum staffing levels, complete special projects, staff Court Security stations, and cover vacant shifts due to employees on vacation or sick leave. Extra help classifications are recruited for in the same manner as other permanent positions. To view what recruitments are currently accepting applications, visit the Placer County Human Resources online JOBS bulletin board on the employment portal.
If Placer county is not currently accepting applications for the classification(s) you are interested in, you can submit an interest card for the position(s) you are seeking and the County's Online job-application service (called JOBS) will electronically email a notification when the an application can be submitted. Interest cards stay on file for up to 12 months. To submit an interest card, employment portal and navigate to "Notify me of New Job Openings." Follow the instructions on submitting your interest. You can check any Job Group you are interested in. Please note Deputy Sheriff Positions are listed under "Public Safety/Law Enforcement."
Extra Help deputies are typically assigned to our Court Security Services, Background Investigations, Concealed Weapons or Civil Units. Civilian staff may be assigned to a variety of units within the Sheriff's Office depending on the classification and need for staffing.
If you were a permanent Placer County employee within the last five years and you left county employment "in good standing" and wish to return to permanent or extra help employment with Placer County, you would need to complete a "Reinstatement" application for the classification you wish to reinstate into through the County's Online job-application service. To submit an application, follow "Special Appointments (Placer County Transfer/Reinstatements). Locate the "Reinstatement" section and navigate to the appropriate command to complete an application. Navigate to classification you are interested in and follow the instructions.
For more information regarding re-instatement to your former position, please click view our employment portal.
This section only applies to permanent Placer County employees who are interested in working in a different department and/or classification. An application must be completed if you wish to apply for either a lateral transfer to a similar position to your current classification or a voluntary demotion. For either action, you must meet the minimum qualifications for each classification and qualify under the Placer County Code, Chapter 3.08.380. You can view the guidelines online . To submit an application, click visit our employment portal and navigate to "Special Appointments (Placer County Transfer/Reinstatements). Locate the "Reinstatement" section and click on the appropriate command to complete an application. Follow the classification you are interested in and follow the instructions.
If you have additional questions please contact Sheriff Human Resources at or 530-889-6948 or email the Human Resources office.


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In the previous interviews with Subha Madhavan and Daniela Witten, the AAAS Center for Science, Technology, and Security Policy (CSTSP) discussed the role of Big Data in the biomedical sciences and the statistical challenges facing Big Data. Big Data is also used in a variety of fields outside the biomedical field. One of the newest fields in which Big Data can have an impact is environmental science. With issues such as climate change and environmental security, Big Data may have a significant role to play in addressing national security risks related to the environment.
CSTSP spoke with Angel Hsu, Director of the Environmental Performance Index, a joint project between the Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy and the Center for International Earth Science Information Network at Columbia University. This is a part of a series of interviews that leads up to the AAAS/CSTSP and Federal Bureau of Investigation's public event on April 1, "Big Data, Life Sciences, and National Security."
CSTSP: What does "Big Data" mean in the environmental field? How is that different from "lots of data"?
Angel: This is a great question and I think 'big data' is still very much being defined in the environmental field. In many cases, there does not even exist enough baseline "data," let alone "lots of data," by which to assess environmental impacts. For example, sustainable agriculture: What does it mean - how do we define it, and how do we assess whether practices are sustainable? Can there be optimal uses of fertilizers or pesticides, or is any use inherently deleterious for 'sustainability'? The research in this area is new and evolving, and very little comparable data exists by which to understand, for instance, what is even meant by 'organic.'
My argument is that we are still in the very early phases of developing large-scale datasets for the environment. There are some sources of big data generation for the environment. Satellites, for example, have been around for nearly half a century and are being used for all types of observation, ranging from assessing urban growth to sea level rise and deforestation. However, even these sources of 'big data' are limited in some way in their ability to answer certain environmental questions. Satellite analysis can tell, for example, how much a city has grown over a certain time period, but it doesn't tell me how much energy or water was used in that expansion.
CSTSP: What, in your opinion, are the top 3 most innovative applications of Big Data within the environmental field?
Angel: Global Forest Watch, a collaboration convened by the World Resources Institute that allows for near-real time monitoring of deforestation. One of the strengths of this data-information platform is the collation of many geospatial and satellite datasets that give a granular and aggregate picture of the world's forests. The website includes deforestation alerts called FORMA for the humid tropics based on rapid assessment of satellite images to predict where deforestation might be happening on a monthly basis. The FORMA alerts are a great example of big data being applied to help inform the public and decision makers.
Citizen Science. I know this isn't 'one project' but I think that citizen science, user-contributed data, and crowdsourcing have the potential to push forth the big data revolution for the environment. Because of the data gaps I mentioned above, our understanding of the environment, impacts, and change is limited. There are a few examples of citizen science efforts to involve people in the collection of environmental science data. The e-bird initiative is a great example of this. People love bird-watching and taking pictures of wildlife, so this effort has combined the two to better track a whole host of questions: biodiversity, migration patterns, and species distribution. Another effort out of the University of Oxford is asking citizen scientists to donate their computers and spare time to help run thousands of climate models to establish a linkage between extreme weather events and climate change. In this way, they are generating a big dataset to answer a question and involving citizens to do so. It's really interesting.
Another interesting effort to link big data to the environment is the Wildlife Picture Index, a collaboration between Conservation International and HP, which is using large datasets from camera traps and climate data to develop an early warning system to understand threats to tropical mammal and bird diversity.
CSTSP: You mention Citizen Science. Are there any particular risks and challenges that citizen science or large collaborative networks present to the security of the data?
Angel: yes, there's a risk that user-contributed data may be misused or personal information disclosed. For example, we've seen that happen in 2012 incident involving Target where a teenaged girl's parents found out she was pregnant before she had a chance to tell them. Certainly, there needs to be a set of guidelines, a protocol to establish security measures and ethical standards by which these kinds of data may be collected and used.
CSTSP: In what ways do you see Big Data within your field changing or growing in the near future?
Angel: I think that environmental policymakers and decision makers need to get more creative in thinking about how to generate big data for the environment. Trees can't tweet, and oceans can't create a census of species that live beneath their surface, so until then we've got to get creative about how we can generate the necessary information and knowledge to make the smart policies and decisions that aren't ad hoc. Even though we talk a lot about the need to bridge together disciplines and actors, it's still not being done well enough in environmental policy.
The fact is that businesses and the private sector move faster than academia and can collect data often more efficiently and easily than scientists can. For example, Coca-Cola has a better global water dataset than any UN agency. It's because they operate in 200 countries around the world and their business is directly affected by water risk. So they need to know how much water is available, where it's coming from, what its quality is, and what stakeholders might be impacted by their business operations. The good news is that they are also generous with the data. They gave it to the Aqueduct project that makes all of this data available so other businesses can benefit as well. We need more of these types of public-private-academic partnerships if we hope to improve big data for the environment.
CSTSP: What are some of the biggest challenges or risks facing environmental sciences in the near future, and what role might Big Data play in addressing or exacerbating these future risks and challenges?
Angel: I'd argue that climate change is and will be even more so one of the biggest "game-changers" with respect to our understanding of the environment. There are still too many unknowns. For example, studies have shown that China's air pollution over the last decade has had a cooling effect on the earth's climate. So what happens if China's $277 billion dollar plan to tackle air pollution, approved last July, is effective in bringing down pollution levels to those of Switzerland's? Does this mean there will be a kickback effect whereby global temperatures rise even more than what scientists currently predict with current climate models?
CSTSP: In what ways do you see Big Data addressing the needs of climate research that are currently in development or still need to be developed?
Angel: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 5th Assessment Report 5th Assessment Report was released on March 31. A lot of the scenarios predicting emissions rise and the impacts on sea levels, global temperatures, etc. rely on large-scale, coarse resolution datasets and models. I would say that the challenge is not that there isn't big data by which to model future climate change and its impacts, but how to downscale these large datasets on a local scale so that decision makers and individuals have a sense of how climate change might affect them. I think this is where there's a big data and knowledge gap. The models are global, so it's not clear how cities, states or even countries might be individually impacted.


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You'd be forgiven for mistaking Killer Elite for a remake of the 1975 intriguer The Killer Elite. Rather, the new action picture is a renamed adaptation of Sir Ranulph Fiennes' 1991 book The Feather Men. But you can't call a Jason Statham picture "The Feather Men." It just isn't done.
Rather shakily billed as "based on a true story," Killer Elite concerns fallout from the 1970s Oman War. A tribal Dubai sheikh seeking revenge for his lost sons holds hostage grizzled special-ops man Hunter (Robert De Niro) to force his mentee Danny (Statham) into exacting justice. To plan and execute the assassinations of the SAS operatives the sheikh holds responsible, Danny must come out of self-imposed retirement and call in favors with old friends, including the somewhat loose cannon Davies (Dominic Purcell).
When a clubby group of ex-SAS bankers and businessmen gets wind of what the "top-class professional assassins" are up to, they employ yet another ex-SAS "spook," Clive Owen's Spike, to put a stop to Danny. It's all doled out in oft-clunky dialogue (like the blunt summation "Omar was a dirty war. What we did there was questionable") that marks time between assorted bombs, chases, firefights and fistfights. Since those are the elements that get action junkies' butts in seats, audiences may not so much mind.
First-time feature director Gary McKendry handles the cloak-and-dagger-meet-ammo theatrics surprisingly well. The action alternates from been-there, done-that to in-your-face, eye-widening stuff, with a pinch of the absurd thrown in. What Killer Elite never manages is to convince us of its sociopolitical import (though not for lack of pretentious feints) or its emotional resonance (Danny's respectively romantic and platonic loves: Yvonne Strahovski as his aussie girlfriend, and Hunter).
De Niro fans will get a charge out of seeing the sixty-eight-year-old actor go into action, and his dialogue scenes are zestier than the rest. Primarily, though, this is Statham's show (with a nice assist from Owen, wearing a milky left eye and a perpetual state of annoyance). Just as the film has nothing fresh to say (unless you count "Killing's easy—living with it's the hard part"), the lean, mean Statham has nothing fresh to offer, delivering the exact same benignly growly performance he always has. Those expecting John le Carré-level intrigue are right out of luck, but Statham fans can get their fix.
[This review first appeared in Palo Alto Weekly.]
Universal sends Killer Elite home in a Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy special edition featuring top-notch A/V specs. The hi-def Blu-ray transfer impeccably replicates the filmmakers' intentions with a film-like, highly detailed image. Hues are true, contrast well calibrated, and black level inky (though the very darkest moments betray extra grain and some shadow crush). The basically perfect video shares disc space with an excellent lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround mix that bristles with activity from all angles. Tthe mix is so good that it unfortunately betrays the difference between set audio and ADR drop-ins, but that's a small price to pay for clear dialogue and poundingly potent action effects.
Thirteen "Deleted Scenes" (9:43, HD) are the disc's sole extra, but they will only appeal to the most hardcore fan of the film. Casual viewers aren't likely to get any entertainment value from these trims. At aggressive discounts, Killer Elite on Blu-ray (with DVD copy and Digital Copy) may well be worth the plunge for fans of Jason Statham or Clive Owen, or for Robert De Niro completists.
Review gear: |
Panasonic Viera TC-P55VT30 55" Plasma 1080p 3D HDTV
Oppo BDP-93 Universal Network 3D Blu-ray Disc Player
Denon AVR2112CI Integrated Network A/V Surround Receiver
Pioneer SP-BS41-LR Bookshelf Speaker (2)
Pioneer SP-C21 Center Speaker
Pioneer SW-8 Subwoofer


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Feb.5 (GMM) Toro Rosso on Monday unveiled a cautious evolution of its 2012 car for Daniel Ricciardo and Jean-Eric Vergne to race this season.
With a FIA-sanctioned 'vanity panel' on the front nose, the new STR8 no longer features the 'double floor' of 2012, and the exhaust is notably conventional.
"I just wanted to create a sound base rather than get bogged down in details," technical director James Key, formerly of Sauber, was quoted by Speed Week.
Referring to the conventional exhaust, the Briton added: "I don't mean that this area is unimportant, I just don't want us to be too focused in one area and forget the big picture."
After the launch in the Jerez pitlane ahead of Tuesday's test action, Key continued: "We now have a starting point on which to build upon, step by step."
With the 2012 STR7, featuring innovative undercut sidepods or 'double floor', Faenza based Toro Rosso finished last year's championship ahead only of the three backmarker teams.
In 2013, the Red Bull-owned team wants to finish sixth.
So, explaining why he has scrapped the 'double floor', Key is quoted by Auto Motor und Sport: "I would not say that this concept was totally wrong.
"But it was not delivering on what the engineers initially promised, and the development potential was limited."


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"Nurturing Inner Health to Cultivate Community Health"
Coalition Mission Statement:
Partners for Resilience brings together county stakeholders to establish a common resilience-based philosophy to guide coalition members in preventing alcohol and other drug use and the risky behaviors related to chemical use with individual and environmental prevention strategies community-wide.
We exist to support non-use of alcohol and other drugs by youth in Dunn County. Our primary tasks are to: 1) Develop and support countywide and community activities, 2) Create and maintain a network for resource and information exchange within the county, 3) Identify and access county human and financial resources, 4) Conduct county needs assessments of youth behaviors, 5) Promote consistent programs, policies and linkages among community, schools, and agencies, 6) Coordinate and sponsor training and program efforts. PARTNERS collaborate in successfully working to reduce risks and increase protective factors.
For more information see Brochure on the Document Page


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This vintage beauty is our Marceline Mini Flared Dress!
Please note that these are body measurements, not garment measurements. Measure yourself and choose the closest measurements to your own. Make sure you read the item description for advice on fit and fabric.
For accuracy, we recommend you measure yourself in lingerie.
Bust: Measure at the fullest part | Waist: Measure at the narrowest part | Hips: Measure at the widest part


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by T.D. Jakes
Author T.D. Jakes tells single parents not to despair. God has chosen you, Jakes says, to form the next generation's character.
I know there are days when all of us feel as if we are in over our heads. But when those days arise and courage seems to wilt, remember that God's grace is on you for these moments. He will strengthen you against all odds.
Some of you have always had someone else to rely on. But now you are facing the challenge of raising your children alone.
Are you alone? Not really. You never were. God has been there all the time. And the same God who brought you through all of your earlier challenges is waiting for you to acknowledge Him in your current situation.
Do you know that many of the blessings that are on you will pass to your children? For example, it is a blessing to have wise parents. Wise parents pass their reasoning and mentality to their children. This creates a generational blessing.
We have heard about generational curses, but we ought to understand generational blessings, too. If a drug-filled mother gives birth to a drug-addicted child, then why can't a spiritually regenerated mother have a child who has been blessed by her regeneration?
The favor of God is with you as a parent. His hand is there to bless you if you will trust Him.
God's design is to bring strength out of weakness and power out of pain. I challenge you now to allow Christ to equip you with the tools you need to become what God would have you to be as a single parent.
God's blessings can break out in your life as never before, but it takes faith in God. Faith is having the grace to accept the challenges and the struggles of your course, but doggedly and tenaciously searching for the victory within the victimized.
You are the vessel God has chosen to labor with Him in forming the character of the next generation. You may not live long enough to see all of your fruit, but it will be your teachings, your standards that shape your family for years after you are gone. Do it with dignity and character. It is your contribution to the next age.
No wonder the enemy wants to overwhelm and discourage you. When he gets you, he gets two for the price of one. He affects you and the child in one blow.
Tell the devil no! Tell him he will not get a two-for-one sale here. You will guard with all diligence what God has entrusted to you.
Charge your children with faith and power. They are the future.
Consider this: "Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are children of one's youth. Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them; they shall not be ashamed, but shall speak with their enemies in the gate" (Ps. 127:4-5, NKJV).
If my children are my arrows, they are my defense. They are my defense against emptiness. They are my defense against building a house that no one will inherit. They are my defense against having no hand to hold when death comes to carry me home. They are my defense against anonymity in the next generation.
You may never be famous, but your children might be. Few would recognize Martin Luther King Jr.'s mother. Few would recognize the names of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis' parents. Even fewer would know Colin Powell's parents. But somewhere behind the curtains, in the shadows of the stage, there is a face, a hand, an apron, a father or a mother who said, "I will raise my bow."


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A couple of weeks ago we enabled WebGL2 in Nightly. The implementation is still missing some functionality like
PBOs, MSRBs and sampler objects, but it seems to work well enough with the WebGL2 content that we've tried.
WebGL2 is based on OpenGL ES 3 and adds occlusion queries, transform feedback, a large amount of texturing functionality and bunch of new capabilities to the shading language including integer operations.
You can test out the implementation here http://toji.github.io/webgl2-particles/. If it says WebGL2 it's working with WebGL2. We look forward to seeing the graphical enhancements enabled by WebGL2 and encourage developers to start trying it out.


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Brooke's boyfriend is also missing Brooke a lot. Paige and I caught them holding hands in the car a few weeks ago.
Did you hear about this cute couple? They ran a marathon EVERY DAY together last year. 365 marathons. I can barely walk for a week after a marathon.
You can read all about the amazing 68 and 64 year old HERE.
Two beautiful places have combined. Mountain West Burrito with Waffle Love right next door.
Steak salads and chips and guac. This salad is so fresh and I love it. Still drinking the diet coke BUT…. I have cut back a ton lately and I am rather proud of myself.
I think I said, "I wish this would never end" a million times as I ate my berry and nutella waffle last night. I haven't had anything this good in a long time (scouts honor that I am not exaggerating about this waffle).
And things ended with a goodbye to Jess. She is being rude and going back to the Bay Area and leaving us. Rather selfish to go back to her job when she should just continue to hang out with us all of the time.
PS don't drive with cupcakes in your car. Quite the tragedy occurred when a car cut me off yesterday and I had to slam on my breaks. I don't know if I can ever forgive them.
What are your New Year's Resolutions for 2014?
What was your dinner last night?
Soda people… Pepsi or Coke?!?
-100% coke products.


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